Liberal environmentalist groups are enraged and are planning huge protests demanding Hillary stop campaigning to protect illegal alien criminals who are hiding from the law in sanctuary cities…Just kidding.
Angel Gilberto Garcia-Avalos had been deported five times in just the past four years, yet each time he has managed to sneak from Mexico back into the U.S., where he ended up in more mischief: driving without a license, attempted burglary and felony weapons charges.
In August, he graduated to full-fledged mayhem, sparking a fire in the Sequoia National Forest that has already cost the government $61 million and left some of the country’s most beautiful landscape scarred for years to come.
Authorities said Angel Gilberto Garcia-Avalos, 29, of Michoacán, Mexico, caused the Cedar Fire on Aug. 16 when he was driving off-road in the Sequoia National Park. The fire continues to burn in Kern and Tulare counties. Garcia-Avalos received six months in prison for causing a fire on federal land and received seven months in prison for separate counts of making false statements to U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers, Acting United States Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced.
The maximum possible sentence for each of the three charges was six months in prison. Garcia-Avalos was also ordered to pay $61 million in restitution.
In sentencing Garcia-Avalos, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer L. Thurston noted that Garcia demonstrated “significant negligence” According to officials, Garcia lied to a Forest Service law enforcement officer on the day the fire started saying that his vehicle had been stolen after he parked it on the side of California Highway 155. About two weeks later, Garcia lied again to a special agent of the Forest Service and said that his vehicle was taken when he parked it on the paved road and that he had not driven his vehicle off the highway onto a dirt road.
Garcia had only recently been released from the Kern County Jail. He likely would have been deported again, but local authorities were unable to report him to immigration authorities because of California’s new sanctuary city law, which prohibited the sheriff from communicating with federal agents.
Federal agents now say they will kick Garcia out of the country once he serves his latest sentence, but the damage has already been done. –recorderonline
At a point along State Highway 155 through the Sequoia National Forest, the smell of cedar gives way to the stench of soot. Ash-blackened trees above and below the roadway show the path of the blaze. –Washington Times
